Top New York Restaurants of 2015

The new restaurants I reviewed this year gave me a very deep bench from which to pick this year-end list. Ruthlessly, this ranking of my favorites was capped at 10, but I could have stretched it to 15 without any noticeable drop-off in quality.

Two places that made the cut, Momofuku Ko and Mission Chinese Food, were transferred from their original sites. They are new restaurants in my book because they have almost nothing in common with their first incarnations. But had I rejected them, I could have made room at the end of the list for, say, Houseman or Rebelle or Untitled at the Whitney or the Clocktower or Chomp Chomp, all places I’ll return to if I ever get a free night.

This is a sign of real strength. Before winding down into a disappointingly meager fall season, it was an excellent year for New York restaurants. I suspect that we’ll look back on 2015 as the high-water mark in postrecession dining.

Sluggish economies breed cautious restaurants. This year’s crew is anything but. Cosme dared New York to see Mexican food in new ways. (We took the dare.) Momofuku Ko and Mission Chinese Food stretched far beyond anything they’d achieved at their prior addresses. The chef Gabriel Kreuther gambled that his exacting and generous cooking could still lure crowds without the imprimatur of Danny Meyer. Wildair’s owners guessed that the city was ready for a modern wine bar like Manfreds in Copenhagen. Superiority Burger doubled down on the idea that the whiff of Birkenstocks could be expunged from veggie burgers and other crunchy hippie food. Its prices — nothing over $10 — are recession-friendly, but its risk-taking spirit is pure 2015.

Mexican food in the city finally graduated from chips and guac when Enrique Olvera opened Cosme, his first restaurant in New York. (The menu has guacamole off to one side in its own column, which may as well be called Are We Still Doing This?) Mr. Olvera built a restaurant that instantly made passé our salt-rimmed preconceptions about his native cuisine. The large dining room is spare, not exotic, cosmopolitan and still a bit of a scene more than a year in. Yana Volfson’s lists of wine and other drinks display a global curiosity, although her bar is one of the best places around to plumb the smoky mysteries of mezcal. But the cooking is why reservations are hard to come by: subtle, sensitive and smart-looking explorations of Mexican tastes and traditions. Like the cobia, rubbed with pineapple and chiles and meant to be eaten in a taco. Steamy tortillas come on the side. Taste them, and you realize that most tortillas in New York are corn-based coasters. Three stars; 35 East 21st Street, Flatiron; 212-913-9659; cosmenyc.com.

Apart from the name and one dish (the feathery mound of shaved foie gras over riesling jelly) that made David Chang’s original Ko famous, everything is different. The servers are graceful and intuitive. The tall leather-backed chairs are so comfortable that you never want to hop down. The wine glasses are things of beauty, and the stuff in them is seriously good, too. Most of all, the kitchen, under Sean Gray, has a high degree of finesse. The long tasting menus including some argument-ending dishes, like the boxed sushi or the uni with chickpeas. Mr. Chang’s relentless drive to serve food the likes of which you’ve never seen anywhere else is finally backed, in these refined quarters, by a fully modern form of luxury. Three stars; 8 Extra Place (East First Street), East Village; 212-203-8095; momofuku.com/new-york/ko/.

Many admirers of the sprawling, cosseting restaurant Gabriel Kreuther opened after nine years at the Modern have been inclined to see it as fine dining’s last stand. In fact, it is in a mildly eccentric class of its own, a homage to Alsace where you can eat rustic tartes flambeés and liverwurst in the lounge or be blitzed by high-end precision in the dining room. The tableside fussing, as different flatware pieces that look like peculiar dental tools are brought out for each course, probably won’t convert those who fear fanciness. On the other hand, the cooking is so exuberant and generous that it’s hard to resist, and nobody else slings foie gras like Mr. Kreuther. He’s made his pastry chef, Marc Aumont, a true creative partner. It’s almost worth the $115 prix fixe just to see Mr. Aumont’s breads, which pop up throughout the meal, starting with a winningly savory kugelhopf. Three stars; 41 West 42nd Street, Midtown; 212-257-5826; gknyc.com.

With slow-rolling party music and moody lighting, Shuko could be the cocktail bar of your dreams. When the procession of small plates, elegant little Japanese pleasure bombs, gets underway, it could be the sushi bar of your dreams. Some dishes impress with their simplicity, like the grilled mushroom cap folded over warm rice. Others, like the spicy tuna hand roll that drips with hot belly fat and screams with pickled Thai chiles, are unabashedly out to blow all your circuits. Jimmy Lau and Nick Kim, the chefs and partners, spent years studying under Masa Takayama. At their best, which they often are now, they can surpass the master. Three stars; 47 East 12th Street (Broadway), Greenwich Village; 212-228-6088; shukonyc.com.

Anybody who doesn’t understand why I gave two stars to this counter-service veggie-burger joint that barely seats six people isn’t paying attention to what Brooks Headley and his crew are up to. Superiority Burger is the most radical restaurant in New York. No other place has gone so far in the evolving experiment of stripping the dining experience to its core values. The servers are more engaged and present than in some four-star restaurants, and the vegetarian cooking of Mr. Headley and his crew, served in paper boats and cartons, is surprising, fun and truly creative. It is also getting better; the mutant cheese steak made with tofu skins seems to have improved since my review, and a recent special, a sugary white sweet potato loaded with an inspired relish of chopped pickles, serranos and tarragon, is one of the most original dishes I’ve had this year. Mr. Headley is in the scrum almost every night, wearing a paper soda jerk hat as he fills orders for Arnold Palmers (the only drink sold) and dessert (last week, intensely good date-shake gelato and tangerine sorbet with toasted coconut in a paper cup, worth more than the $4 he charges). Other restaurants offer greater comfort, but few have Superiority Burger’s racing pulse. Two stars; 430 East Ninth Street (Avenue A), East Village; 212-256-1192; superiorityburger.com.

This is where I send anybody who asks me where to get unfussy, delicious food in the West Village. Nobody has been disappointed yet. Jody Williams and Rita Sodi, the chefs and owners, know when to respect Italian tradition and when to give it a poke. The pasta is supple, just firm enough, never oversauced. The vegetables, though, get a little wild, and are almost always the better for it. Ms. Williams is a veteran flea-market scavenger, and her trophies conjure a kind of fantasy of rustic Italian life. They cover every available surface except the wall of windows, which anchors Via Carota firmly back in its neighborhood. Two stars; 51 Grove Street (Seventh Avenue), West Village; no phone; viacarota.com.

Inside Santina’s glass-box building is an Italian seaside vacation that never ends, even when the beach umbrellas come inside for the winter. Cha-cha music rustles the fronds of potted palms, servers’ outfits are Riviera-bright, and the food, on cheerfully colored glazed terra cotta, tastes like summer. Fish and vegetables rule the day, seasoned with chiles, herbs and citrus until they shimmer with fresh, energizing flavors. The Major Food Group builds restaurants as immersive theater; in this one, everything but the noise conspires to lift your mood. Two stars; 820 Washington Street (Gansevoort Street), Meatpacking District; 212-254-3000; santinanyc.com.

This is the year’s “Started from the bottom, now we’re here” restaurant. It’s a rats-to-riches story in which Danny Bowien, shut out of his first restaurant by the health department and some stubborn rodents, rebuilds with a great deal more swank and sophistication. There are deep semicircular banquettes where you can stretch out while investigating a mildly wacky cocktail. Drinks have real booze in them, and there’s a real wine list, heavily swayed by the natural-wine cult. The menu, overseen by Angela Dimayuga, the executive chef, got the greatest upgrade of all. A short squad of blistering Sichuanesque standards is now augmented by cooking that has both swagger and nuance. Two stars; 171 East Broadway (Rutgers Street), Lower East Side; 212-432-0300; missionchinesefood.com.

It was meant to be a simple spinoff, a casual wine bar down the street from Jeremiah Stone and Fabian von Hauske’s first restaurant, Contra. But Wildair took on a life of its own. Part of the appeal is in how solidly the two chefs reconceived wine-bar standbys like beef tartare, charcuterie and salads, making each dish a fresh discovery. Part of it comes from Jorge Riera’s wine list, and how easily he and the rest of the servers can infect customers with their own excitement about a bottle. The room may or may not be attractive, but the whole experience is magnetic. Two stars; 142 Orchard Street (Rivington Street), Lower East Side; 646-964-5624; wildair.nyc.

A victory for populism, Upland proves that New York can still whip up a large, crowd-pleasing restaurant where the food is worth getting excited about. The chef, Justin Smillie, goes back to the roots of California cuisine, mixing Italian tradition (bucatini cacio e pepe) with American free-for-all innovation (duck wings with a catalyzing vinaigrette of yuzu kosho). The wine list, which roams around the globe, loops back home again to make its strongest case with its stash of American bottles. Two stars; 345 Park Avenue South (entrance on East 26th Street), Kips Bay; 212-686-1006; uplandnyc.com.